the mind-killing existence in corporate mediocrity
Wake up. It's 5:20 am. You're still tired from the night because your daughter is sick and you spend half an hour cleaning vomit off a Pikachu plush. You hear the sound of Lease by Takeshi Abo, a familiar song if you circle niche aesthetic forums. It brings a slight bit of comfort in the otherwise existential dread of the routine you stumbled into. The rut.
You didn't make a rut, you stumbled into one that was premade for most people like you. The rut was already made by people who existed long before you.
Loving wife, beautiful daughter, a comfy desk job with full benefits, and a salary that's just big enough for said wife to be able to stay home and raise your daughter.
You feel this dichotomy. By seemingly most measures of societal success, you've won the game. It's all side-quests from here. So why does it feel hollow? Is it because a significant part of your life is taken up by the mundane and exploitative nature of corporate America? The fact you spend most of your life either asleep or working for a group of people so out-of-touch with the needs of the people they deem beneath them? You've gone through this thought pattern before you've even brushed your teeth.
You get dressed in attire that you hope screams "I refuse to participate in this masquerade", kiss your sleeping wife, and walk to the garage. You get into your boring car, turn it on, look for what album you want to listen to for your hour long drive to your cognitive labor camp while the car warms up.
There's almost a dissociation that occurs between the half hour mark and the near-end of you commute. Lapses in consciousness that make you wonder how you even got there if you look it in the eyes. Only ever seemingly disrupted by cars with headlights that were engineered to make even Stevie Wonder think it's too bright. I am Jack's burning retinas.
You arrive at your office. You take a light puff of your THC vape pen, a jingle from a Serj Tankian song plays in your head:
anti-depressants controlling tools of your system. Making life more tolerable, making life more tol-er-a-ble.
You walk out into the city, it's quiet. No surprise, it's not even 7am yet. It feels almost like a liminal space to your liminal space between home and home. You get inside and walk to the kitchen for water, making sure to check and see if your boss's boss is out. If he's out, leave an hour early. If he's in, 15 minutes early.
He's in. 15 minutes it is then.
You're earlier than basically everyone else, so nobody can tell you're skipping out early. It's like playing hooky for a class where the teacher barely knows you exist.
You've zoned out by this point, entrenched in doing literally anything else other than work. You check the news. Another person killed by ICE. I am Jack's complete lack of surprise. You go onto YouTube to get something out of anything.
It's now somehow 9am. Either because of the THC in your system or you've slipped into another state of unconscious consciousness. Have your ADHD meds kicked in? You can never really tell.
Meeting, followed up by another meeting, followed up by another meeting to extend the previous meeting. Is this all there is?
You get around to doing some work, it's done in less than an hour, but you gotta make yourself look busier than you are. I am Jack's sore office chair-fused ass.
It's 12pm, lunch. Brief period to take your headphones off and soak in the mundane conversations of people on your floor. Waffles with 18g of protein that taste just like eggos. Another kid is sick, you almost wonder if they indirectly got your child sick. You eat at your desk because it's one of those days where your coworkers aren't hanging out in the lunch area.
You get done at around 1. Now to just survive the longest 1 hour 30 minutes of your life. You wish time moved as quickly now as it seemingly did in the morning.
You reply to most messages received via Teams using the default generated responses. It's almost as if even it knows this shit is mundane.
You start to visualize an elevator interaction with the CEO of the company you work for, where you proceed to verbally rip her apart for her obtuse return-to-office policy. You're angry that you spend more time doing things you don't want to do for people that don't matter instead of spending that time doing things you want to do with people that do matter. You used to be so optimistic about work.
It's ironic actually. You spend the same amount of time on Teams calls in-office as you did work from home. It's almost like the whole "it's to promote more in-person cooperation" is just another example of corporate double-speak.
Somehow, the hour-long 10 minutes finally pass and you get the hell out of there. Same hour-long commute just backwards. You go 15mph over the speed limit like the rest of left lane traffic, keeping an eye out for cops.
It is now an unbroken dissociation between work and home. What have you even actually done today? What are you going to do with the rest of your day? Northbound traffic is clogged for reasons you can only theorize based on the presence of police and highway assistance vehicles that come after a car accident.
Exit freeway, find the rest of your way home. You finally get to the best part of your day. Despite your little girl being sick, all she wants to do for the next 3 hours until bed time is play with you. Is this why work exists? To make you appreciate the limited time you get with loved ones? They say absence makes the heart grow fonder. I am Jack's burning hatred for corporate America.
Seems like you've just begun when suddenly it's time to put your daughter to bed. Where did the time go?
You cherish a moment that you know won't last forever. Sitting in a rocking chair, singing to your sleepy girl. You put her in her crib and kiss her goodnight.
You walk out, wife is studying for her classes in the bedroom, again. You almost take it personally, but you remember why you have frequent date nights.
You go sit on the couch in your office and turn on the TV to play video games for an hour. You're well past exhausted. 8:30 rolls around and you decide to go to bed early. Your wife is still studying. You finally drift off to sleep at 9-ish.
This isn't every day, but it's more often than not your day.
Welcome to my world. Poor me, right?
Reply via email: me@absurdpirate.com
as of writing this...
can you tell I wrote this while bored at work?